Character Motivations
Help your students understand and justify character motivations with this engaging spinner board game.
Character motivations. They might be external needs and relate to survival but they might also be psychological or existential needs such as love or professional achievement. Outside of simply driving your characters to action motivations key importance lies in creating emotional connection with readers. In this post we share the seven qualities of compelling character motivations.
What is their history or backstory. Students can play in groups of 2 4 as they spin a motivation and then match them to the scenarios on the board game. They can form the backbone for your entire story provide a character arc or simply add another dimension to the plot and characters you already have.
When a character s behaviour reveals their deeper drives urges and impulses they feel fully human. If we want our characters to be believable and more importantly to make sense in a fictional universe we have to work on what motivates them. Identify popular examples of character motivations in fiction.
With emotional drive comes the character depth your audience will love. Yet there are always at least some characters who show psychological cause and effect in their behaviour. For example in a christmas carol the main character scrooge goes from a greedy cruel and just all round terrible person to a generous warm and kinder person.
Read 6 questions that will help you work out characters motivations. They can provide motivation for your hero or for your villain. Love of others success prestige.
The before mentioned conflicts and motivations should lead to a character arc as well which means the character is different at the beginning of a story and at the end. Character motivations don t necessarily need to be made explicit. It stays in our rota.
Backstory is your character s history. If you had to sort all the motivations listed above into two categories you might label them fear and love fear of death hunger abandonment. Motivations in fiction don t need to be rational after all humans are incredibly irrational.
Character motivations are far more of a storytelling powerhouse than many writers realize. Every person has a past. This is such a fun activity and my students love this game.
Motivations are intrinsic needs. What do character motivations help writers achieve. Character motivations make characters paths credible.
In many horror novels part of the mystery and thrill is not knowing exactly why a malevolent entity terrorizes its victims. If you understand what motivates your characters it is easier to create a plot for your story. Do all character motivations have to be rational.
As we ve often discussed humans are emotional beings.
